Is there a chainsaw in the House?

Politics is a game of lies – lies based on false premises and false assumptions. And, currently, one of the most talked about false-assumption-based lies is that Congress must raise the debt ceiling to save the “full faith and credit” of the United States.

Unfortunately, Republicans are doing a lousy job of explaining to the public that if the debt ceiling is not raised, there will still be plenty of money coming into the U.S. Treasury every month to make its interest payments on the national debt.

But from a long-term point of view, there’s an even more important reason why the debt ceiling shouldn’t be raised: The more you raise the debt ceiling, the nearer the U.S. gets to the point where the national debt is so high that the economy will collapse and the country will no longer be able to meet its interest obligations anyway.

Thus, the choice comes down to whether to face financial Armageddon sooner or later. And since politics is all about the next election, sooner is always off the table as an option.

Of course, the real reason Obama and his criminal cronies in Congress want to raise the debt ceiling is that they don’t want to cut back on their economy-killing social programs – so they’ve purposely created a false choice for Americans: Raise the debt ceiling or default on the national debt.

The truth is that if the debt ceiling were not raised, it would force the government to cut spending. It’s not interest on the debt that wouldn’t get paid. That would get paid first. What would not get paid – by default – are thousands of government employees and programs. Knowing this, can someone give me a rational reason why any politician who claims to be in favor of small government would want to increase the debt ceiling under any circumstances?

What no one – repeat, no one – seems to have any interest in talking about is that if you cut spending enough, the need to raise the debt ceiling disappears. Unfortunately, thanks to the progressive big spenders in Washington, millions of people assume that the government can’t cut enough from the budget to eliminate the need to raise the debt ceiling.

Excuse me for asking a stupid question, but why? The Obamaviks increased the debt by more than $3 trillion in Obama’s first two years in office, so why not just cut that amount from the budget and put us back to where we were in 2008? Were people dying in the streets before Obama took office in 2009?

An even better question is, why can’t we cut spending back to 2000 levels? Too radical, you say? Again I ask, were people dying in the streets in 2000? Were the public schools worse in 2000 that they are today? Were we less safe than we are now?

Those who are pushing for a balanced-budget amendment are thinking in the right direction, but they’re missing the bigger picture. The fact is that you can always balance the budget by raising taxes high enough, so such an amendment could actually backfire and give politicians an argument for continually raising taxes.

What we need is to take a chainsaw to spending – legislated spending caps – in addition to a balanced-budget amendment. Maybe we could call it the Chainsaw-Massacre Spending Bill. That has nice ring to it.

The problem, unfortunately, is that, even in this day and age of the tea-party movement, there are still too many voters who are against major spending cuts. What concerns me most is not the socialists in Congress or the roughly 35 percent of Americans who fully support a full-blown socialist America. Those people will never budge from their ideological beliefs, and that’s fine if they truly believe that socialism (or worse) will make America a better place. I say, go right ahead and stand on your principles.

The folks I’m concerned about are the 20 percent or so in the middle who don’t really want the government to have too much control over their lives, but still want their “fair share” of government largesse. I believe it’s called having your cake and eating it, too.

These are the voters to whom Republicans still feel they must pander. It may take a complete collapse of the economy and the disappearance of all benefits to get them to the point where they are willing to open their minds to the reality that the vast majority of government programs and benefits are against the law – i.e., unconstitutional. Worse, they are immoral. Or, if you’re a pragmatist, you can just fall back on the historical fact that government programs always increase in size and number and therefore destroy the economy and take away people’s freedoms.

In the meantime, back at comedy central, Democrats, including Obama himself, are now talking – not acting, but talking – about the need to cut the deficit. They see the pitchforks gathering again on the slopes outside the Capitol building.

Yep, the tea-party folks (those radicals Cowboy Poet Harry Reid assured us would fade away by the time the 2012 elections roll around) are coming back for more scalps. Not to be presumptuous, but I wouldn’t mind suggesting a couple of names that would fit quite nicely at the top of that list. (Hint: Their last names start with B and C.)